Day 10 - Taizhou

A quiet morning for us as Lawrence was teaching, so Phil tried out the hotel gym while Catherine (who was still feeling under the weather - strange phrase!) took the opportunity to relax in our hotel room.

Later in the morning we headed out with Lawrence to a lovely park, a 15 min drive away, to take a leisurely walk around a large lake in the Sunday sunshine. Everyone was very friendly - we are a bit of a novelty as, whilst Taizhou is a Tier 3 Chinese city, it is not a tourist city, so Westerners are quite rare - and several youngsters took the opportunity to practice their English language skills on us, and why not!

Lawrence went ahead of us to his first lesson, and we took a taxi back (hailed using WeChat - the ‘everything app’, along with Alipay, in China) to sit on one of his lessons. Along with his teaching assistant, he was using ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ to teach English to 5 preschoolers. It was great to see Lawrence at work, and we were mistaken for some potential new teachers by some parents!

Later on we met Naomi, Lawrence’s lovely Chinese girlfriend, and we all headed out for a fabulous meal at Bojing. The table was lit up by a projector in the ceiling - the effect was that of an animated tablecloth - magical! After the meal, Lawrence and Naomi presented us with a traditional Chinese outfit each. After trying them on for some pictures, we went for a walk along the riverside.

I will say this - the Chinese really do like to light things up! As we walked along the bank, we loved the laser lights and projectors, pagodas and temples. Every bridge was lit up, and as we mentioned above, Taizhou is not a tourist city at all.

After walking for a couple of hours (and a very funny encounter with a drunk cafe owner) we taxied back to Naomi’s car and back to the hotel for a well earned night’s sleep.Read more